These suggestions were not in their entirety received favorably by the King. He refused outright to adopt those relating to the selection and appointment of governors, and to the abolition of life councillorships. He did, however, order that the procurators should be elected yearly by the people, and he greatly enlarged the functions and powers of that office. A new system of choosing alcaldes was also decreed. Instead of their being elected yearly by the Councils, it was ordered that the Council presided over by the alcalde should nominate two candidates, that the Council members without the alcalde should nominate two more, and that the Governor should name one; and that from among these five a first and second alcalde should be chosen by lot.
Thus in the administration of Gonzalo de Guzman the principle of "Cuba for the Cubans," afterward long neglected, was pretty efficiently established. The Governor, at that time, and all other royal officers of the island, were Cuban colonists; and the people were invested with power to select their own procurators or advocates, who were irremovable, and who were competent to represent the people not only in the Cuban courts and in those of Hispaniola, but also before the Royal Council for the Indies at Madrid, and who were empowered to proceed against the municipal councils, the royal officials, or even the Governor himself.
CHAPTER X
The early part of the administration of Gonzalo de Guzman was chiefly occupied with the investigation of his predecessors' stewardships, and with controversies with the municipal councils. There was also a controversy with the Crown over the payment to him of a salary for his services, which he requested of the King, and which the King ordered to be paid to him, but which he did not receive. Then came complications over the royal treasurership in the island. Christopher de Cuellar had been succeeded in that office by Pedro Nuñez de Guzman. The latter died, leaving a considerable fortune, and the colonial government at Hispaniola immediately designated Andres Duero to succeed him temporarily, until the King should make a permanent appointment; the expectation apparently being that Duero would be confirmed in the office. Unfortunately for the success of this design, however, the temporary appointment had been made without consulting the royal officials; who were not unnaturally piqued and offended. The result was that a protest was made to the King, not only against the method of his appointment but also against Duero himself. To this the King listened sympathetically, and he presently overruled the appointment of Duero, and in place of him named Hernando de Castro as temporary treasurer, until such time as he could have conditions investigated and could select some fitting man as a permanent incumbent.
Oddly enough, Castro had once before supplanted Duero, as the royal factor in Cuba. This office had first been held by Bernardino Velasquez, upon whose death Andres Duero had been appointed to hold it temporarily, only to be speedily replaced by Castro. The latter appears to have been one of the most enterprising men of affairs of that time, and to have done more than most of his contemporaries for the industrial and economic development of the island. He became engaged in commerce between Spain and the West Indies at an early date, and paid much attention to agriculture, which he believed would be the chief permanent industry of Cuba. It was he who introduced the cultivation of wheat and other staples, with a view to making the island self-supporting, and for such activities he received the formal thanks of the King. Unfortunately, he too somewhat compromised himself by attempting to appropriate as his own the native Cubans who had been the serfs of Bernardino Velasquez and whom Duero, the factor pro tempore, had seized.
Soon after the replacing of Duero with Castro as treasurer pro tempore the former died, and then the latter was in turn replaced by the permanent appointment of Lopez Hurtado, who held the place for many years, and who was distinguished at once for his honesty and his irrepressible cantankerousness. He seemed to have a mania for faultfinding; though doubtless there was much legitimate occasion for the exercise of that faculty. To his mind, almost every other man in Cuba was a knave, and he never wearied of reporting to the King, in interminable written messages, his complaints and accusations. Not only in spite of but also because of this he was a most useful public servant.
Pedro Nuñez de Guzman, who died in 1527, left, as we have seen, a considerable fortune. Practically all of it was left to his widow, and her the thrifty Gonzalo de Guzman presently married, and thus got himself into one of the most serious controversies of his whole career. A part of the fortune of Pedro consisted of about two hundred Cuban serfs. These Gonzalo de Guzman, as Repartidor, transferred to the widow, and then, of course, when he married her, they became his property. This roused the animosity of the honest but cantankerous Hurtado, who thought that the Cubans should have been given to himself, as their former owner's official successor; according to the example set by Hernando de Castro, as already related. Hurtado accordingly wrote to the King a long letter on the subject, which, though it did not cause intervention in that special matter, attracted the King's attention to the complications which the Guzman marriage was producing.
The mother of the late Pedro Nuñez de Guzman next appeared as a party to the controversy. This lady, Doña Leonora de Quiñones, who had remained in Spain, complained that a great injustice had been done to her and to her other children by the transfer of Pedro's entire fortune to his widow and thence to the latter's second husband, and she applied to the Spanish courts for relief. The result was a series of lawsuits, which scandalized the Spanish courts for a term of years. In these suits many prominent Cubans were involved, and nearly the whole population of the island took sides for one or the other of the parties. Street brawls occurred over it, and the violence culminated in a physical scuffle in the aisle of the cathedral, between Gonzalo de Guzman and the Alcalde of Santiago, in which the latter had most of his clothes torn from his back, and for which Guzman was required to do penance.
The King had given his assent to the Guzman marriage, and was unwilling to withdraw it, or to censure Guzman for taking and striving to retain all of Pedro's estate. Nevertheless he remonstrated with the litigants for the fury of their controversy, which he truly told them was not only a disgrace to the island but was also a grave practical injury to it. The conflict continued, however, until all the resources of the law courts were exhausted. By that time many of the lawyers were considerably enriched, but a still large part of the estate was confirmed in the possession of Gonzalo de Guzman and his wife. All this militated against the confidence with which Guzman had been regarded, and hastened steps for the subjection of him to the fate of his predecessors.
We have seen that Guzman had been commissioned to investigate the administration of his predecessor, Altamarino, and that he had performed that congenial task with energy and zeal. Now came his own turn to undergo the same treatment. It was only a little more than two years after his accession to the governorship that the King or the Crown officials in Spain concluded that it would be well to have his affairs looked into. For the performance of this work Juan Vadillo was selected, in the autumn of 1528. He was a notably efficient man. He had been employed for some time by the crown as a debt-collector in Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica and Porto Rico, and had been highly successful in that work; wherefore it was thought that he would subject Guzman's administration to a particularly thorough examination.
He declined, however, to accept the commission; for a variety of reasons. One was, that he had thitherto taken his orders and received his commissions directly from the King, and he considered it beneath his dignity now to be an underling of a mere Admiral of the Indies—or of the widow of the Admiral, since the commission for this job was to be given by the widow of Diego Columbus. Another reason was found in the terms on which the commission was to be granted. He was to be governor of Cuba for thirty days. During that time he was to conduct his investigation of Guzman's administration. Then, with the assumption